Creating Designer Children Causes Stir in IVF Community
A Los Angeles Clinic, and not the octuplet doctor if you must ask, is now offering their patients the "option" to select genetic traits to those who want it - eye color, hair color, skin color, freckles. Is this a marketing ploy, or is this really possible? I understand the concept of PGD, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, but does it really provide the opportunity for this sort of selection?
When I first read the articles, I was immediately concerned, as I knew that this sort of "weird science" would cause quite a stir, which we really do not need right now in the IVF community after the octuplet mess.
Well, read for yourselves, and let me know what you think.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "A Los Angeles clinic says it will soon help couples select both gender and physical traits in a baby when they undergo a form of fertility treatment. The clinic, Fertility Institutes, says it has received "half a dozen" requests for the service, which is based on a procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD."
"While PGD has long been used for the medical purpose of averting life-threatening diseases in children, the science behind it has quietly progressed to the point that it could potentially be used to create designer babies. It isn't clear that Fertility Institutes can yet deliver on its claims of trait selection. But the growth of PGD, unfettered by any state or federal regulations in the U.S., has accelerated genetic knowledge swiftly enough that pre-selecting cosmetic traits in a baby is no longer the stuff of science fiction.
'It's technically feasible and it can be done,' says Mark Hughes, a pioneer of the PGD process and director of Genesis Genetics Institute, a large fertility laboratory in Detroit. However, he adds that 'no legitimate lab would get into it and, if they did, they'd be ostracized.'
But Fertility Institutes disagrees. 'This is cosmetic medicine,' says Jeff Steinberg, director of the clinic that is advertising gender and physical trait selection on its Web site. 'Others are frightened by the criticism but we have no problems with it."
Click Here for Complete Article in the WSJ
Click Here for Complete Article in BBC News
Theresa M. Erickson, Esq.
Surrogacy Lawyer & Egg Donation Lawyer
www.EricksonLaw.net
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